Accessibility
"Democracy cannot exist without online freedom of expression"
Born in Athens, European Union (EU) Special Representative for Human Rights Stavros Lambrinidis is an attorney, a former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece and a former Vice-President of the European Parliament. The speech he delivered at the Tech @State High Level conference in Washington, USA, highlights the EU's commitment to protecting human rights and democracy by promoting internet freedom.
Democracy cannot exist without both offline and online freedom of expression, according to Stavros Lambrinidis, EU Special Representative for Human Rights. To that end, the EU must uphold its norms, principles, and values in both offline and online worlds, he stressed. In his speech, delivered at the Tech @State High Level conference, Lambrinidis outlined the EU's action plan for reaching this objective.
One of the next steps will be to develop and publish a set of EU guidelines on freedom of expression—online and offline—that will include the protection of bloggers and journalists. The handbook will help unfurl the EU's view on the restriction of freedom, access to the Internet, and the arrest of bloggers, already made public through repeated condemnation of such acts.
Other planned action includes sending clear political messages against increased internet censorship, and possibly curbing the export of materials intended for internet monitoring and/or telecommunication surveillance in violation of human rights. The EU has already adopted sanctions prohibiting the export of this kind of technology to Syria and Iran, in hopes of preventing authoritarian regimes from using them against human rights defenders.
CELDA 2013 - 2nd call for papers
The International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age 2013 has announced a 2nd call for papers.
Please submit your contribution until 29 April 2013, we look forward to your submission.
e-Learning 2013 - 1st call extension (18 days to deadline)
We have issued an extension call for papers for the IADIS e-Learning 2013 conference with a submission deadline of April 1st 2013.
This conference will take place in Prague, Czech Republic, 23 - 26 July 2013 as part of the IADIS Multi Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems (MCCSIS 2013) Prague, Czech Republic 22 – 26 July 2013.
* Keynote Speakers (confirmed):
Thomas C. Reeves, Professor Emeritus of Learning, Design, and Technology, College of Education, The University of Georgia, USA
Doc. Ing Jan Lojda, President of the Czech Association of Distance Teaching Universities, Czech Republic
* Conference background and goals
The IADIS e-Learning 2013 conference aims to address the main issues of concern within e-Learning. This conference covers both technical as well as the non-technical aspects of e-Learning.
The conference accepts submissions in the following seven main areas: Organisational Strategy and Management Issues; Technological Issues; e-Learning Curriculum Development Issues; Instructional Design Issues; e-Learning Delivery Issues; e-Learning Research Methods and Approaches; e-Skills and Information Literacy for Learning.
* Format of the Conference
The conference will comprise of invited talks and oral presentations. The proceedings of the conference will be published in the form of a book and CD-ROM with ISBN, and will be available also in the IADIS Digital Library (accessible on-line).
The conference proceedings will be submitted for indexing to INSPEC, EI Compendex, Thomson ISI, ISTP and other indexing services.
* Best Papers
The best papers will be selected for publishing as extended versions in the IADIS International Journal on WWW/Internet (ISSN: 1645-7641), in the Interactive Technology and Smart Education (ITSE) journal (ISSN:1741-5659) and also to selected journals (i.e. IADIS International Journal on Computer Science and Information Systems (IJCSIS - ISSN: 1646-3692) including journals from INDERSCIENCE Publishers.
* Types of submissions
Full papers, Short Papers, Reflection Papers, Posters/Demonstrations, Tutorials, Panels and Doctoral Consortium. All submissions are subject to a blind refereeing process.
* Topics related to e-Learning are of interest. These include, but are not limited to the following areas:
- Organisational Strategy and Management Issues
- Technological Issues
- e-Learning Curriculum Development Issues
- Instructional Design Issues
- e-Learning Delivery Issues
- e-Learning Research Methods and Approaches
- e-Skills and Information Literacy for Learning
To see more details and subtopics, please see the attached document or visit the conference website.
IADIS International Conference e-Learning 2013
The IADIS e-Learning 2013 conference aims to address the main issues of concern within e-Learning. This conference covers both technical as well as the non-technical aspects of e-Learning.
Open Praxis Call for Papers: Learning Assessment in Open, Distance and Flexible Education
ICDE's peer-reviewed online journal, Open Praxis, is accepting papers on the topic of Learning Assessment in Open, Distance and Flexible Education. The deadline for submissions is 30th April 2013. Accepted articles will be published in Volume 5, Issue 3, in July 2013.
Open Praxis is now accepting papers on the special theme of Learning assessment in open, distance and flexible education. This focus is on innovative ways of assessing students' performance in open, distance and flexible education. The journal will accept contributions that address aspects such as the following:
La Educación puede suceder en cualquier momento y lugar
La educación a cualquier hora, y en cualquier sitio. Ese es el lema detrás de este libro, que recoge perspectivas sobre la educación no formal por parte de profesores, activistas, y también desde el ámbito del arte y la innovación social.
Este libro de ensayos se basa en talleres que se realizaron durante el seminario internacional Educación Expandida, que se celebró en el 2009 en el Festival ZEMOS98. Se trata de un compendio de las mejores aportaciones sobre los lugares, metodologías y procesos que representan cauces de conocimiento al margen de la educación formal.
La publicación también incluye fichas de proyectos de Educación Expandida y crónicas de los talleres del seminario, además de “La escuela expandida”, un documental que relata la experiencia vivida en el IES Antonio Domínguez Ortiz (situado en el barrio de las Tres Mil Viviendas de Sevilla) durante el desarrollo del taller de Banco Común de Conocimientos de Platoniq.
ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN 2013
Disruptive Pedagogies and Technologies in Universities
This article by Terry Anderson and Rory McGreal was published on the online journal Educational Technology & Society, volume 15, issue 4, in 2012.
This paper is a reaction to the increasing high cost of higher education and the resulting inaccessibility for the millions of potential learners now seeking opportunities for quality higher education opportunities. The paper examines the cost centers associated with campus-based and online education systems and then suggests that disaggregation may prove to be a cost-effective way to reduce tuition payments, while maintaining quality. The paper suggests that discount service models, now available to consumers in many industries may also be attractive in new models of higher education. The paper also briefly looks at the Open Educational Resources University initiative, a pilot, collaborative project attempting to test some of these innovations in a consortium of high quality, accredited public universities. Finally, we note both the disruptive characteristics of this model and commiserate opportunities for innovative providers of higher education.